Phobia
by F You Capslock
Summary: The summer of '76 brings the end of junior year, the bicentennial celebration, fireworks - and terror in the heart of Oklahoma City for four friends and one Great Dane. An origin story of sorts. Tentatively rated a high 'T'.


Phobia: A Scooby Doo fanfiction

Synopsis: The summer of '76 brings the end of junior year, the bicentennial celebration, fireworks - and terror in the heart of Oklahoma City for four friends and one Great Dane. An origin story of sorts.

A/n: So, here's the short version, before all my Ed Edd and Eddy followers find me- found Scooby Doo on Itunes while out-of-state. Velma was always my favorite character, and was always a sort of role model for me – but, after looking into some of the history of the seventies, and even the show's history, it really hit me how tame their world seemed to be. Not even the 'baddies' would get hurt, even accidentally, and most of the villains weren't so bad. It was a very 'wholesome' television show during a time when parents were still concerned for what kind of crap their kids watched, and I think that is a reason why after forty-some years, Scooby and the gang are practically ingrained in our popular culture (Except for Scrappy. Nobody loves Scrappy, apparently).

So, yeah. This.

This is an origin story of sorts, how the gang came to be during a tumultuous time in the mid-seventies. It doesn't hail from any specific Scooby incarnation and is intended to be more realistic than the television show.

And relax. I've got the better part of the story already written, so no 'six months between updates' nonsense like with (cough) myotherstories (cough). Ahem, yeah. Should really get that looked at…

Thanks for taking a look!

xxxx

Prologue: Neurosis

_'If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.' Voltaire, (1694-1778)_

_Velma Dace Dinkley._ Wrote it in neat, slightly wobbly scrawl. Legible chicken scratch, Shaggy had called it, and she had laughed back then.

_Velma Dace Dinkley._ Wrote it again. '_That's my name'_, she thought, just staring at the orange letters until she was sure my eyes would cross behind my glasses and the ink would run together like blood.

Or how about something morbid. Stupid, her thoughts fought back, and she found herself silently mouthing the word. Wrote the letters again. And again, just like she had for every school assignment since kindergarten.

The name never changed. The orange in the gel pen never changed. The slightly angled penmanship, secret pride and bane of more than one teacher's existence come grade time… That changed into stiff letters and forgotten 'I's' and crossed t's, though at first and even third glances it was as perfect as before.

She flipped back on a sudden whim, looking over the journal's back pages, startled to find them blank before a week ago. A blank beginning, where life had really started in the middle… With an ending yet to be determined. Though considering where they were all headed, there would probably be issues…

Jinkies, this was better than a fortune cookie.

"Your friends have abandoned you here," and she could imagine _him_ pacing around me like some predatory animal, waiting for the right moment to strike. "Use you, then lose you, as the kids say these days." The growling voice shot up in pitch, a hit of helium or a man whose voice never broke. "What did you imagine they saw in some kid tagging along with them? I suspect pity," and the claws materialized, as they always did, under her chin, gently stroking her throat. "… No matter how intelligent you may have been."

Tears rose behind her glasses as she shook in his slowly-constricting grip, hating the power he had over her but unable to open her eyes, unable to find her breath as he slowly crushed the life out of her. **_"You can't close your eyes to fear, Dinkley."_** Can't cry enough tears to drown it, either.

"You c-can't hurt me, you're not r-real anymore." The words fell from her mouth, jerked and trembling. A meaningless protest that he batted away, squeezing enough to draw blood. Not anymore. Not real.

And he smiled a faceless smile, fanged teeth twisting his expression into a grotesque grimace. Rip, tear. _Peel her face off_, like a clown takes off his mask. **_Smile for me, Dinkley, smile until the muscles sieze and you cry on the inside until you drown_**. Let them walk over you, tread on you, beat you down. Make it your fault when you finally snap and take all of them with you.

Swallow the irritation, the intense dislike you refuse to call hate because daddy calls it evil.**_ Thou shalt not kill_, Velma Dinkley.** And the shadow laughed at her, and for the first time in a long time, the little girl in orange and red wanted to cry.

More than anything, Velma hated that. performed no function except to make you snotty and gross, your throat close up, eyes bloodshot, stomach upset. _I had seen it enough with Daphne,_ handed her tissues and toilet paper in the girl's room, listened to her, tried to commeserate and felt like a fraud, a fake. A shell, pretending to care. Loved Daph like a sister, but there was a reason she had been specifically asked to join the drama team. _Meanwhile, Fred called me emotionally constipated; I just didn't see the point._

The idea _it's not my fault_ will only take you so far, he reminded her, speaking somehow without opening his mouth. The terrified girl in a red-splattered orange sweater, standing over him as he glared up at her and laughed, laughed at his death at the hands of Velma Dinkley with a bloody fire poker in her hands. _The consequences are still there, even if you won't accept them._

'You are my sunshine,

My only sunshine…' Singing, a soft voice that carried over the heated silence between the darkness and the girl. She shakes her head, takes a step back.

"You're dead, you're dead, you're dead-"

_I killed a man trying to kill me and Daph… He would have killed us... _

The shadow on the hardwood floor just snickers as she eventually falls silent, crouched on the floor, barefoot and whimpering. Reaches for her shoulder, a stab of ice in her shoulder. _**I always love this part**._

She shudders, stepping back until her back hits something solid. Raw palm, aching and chapped, hits the familiarity of solid brick and wood in the dark. A scraping sound that startles her until she realizes its from the thing clinched in her hand, pressed against the dampness soaking her sweater sleeve. Her heart pounds heavily in her chest for some reason, _she should really remember this part_, and then she became aware of another noise. That terrible sound of Daphne's broken sobs, very real this time, and Velma hated herself for it. _I __caused this._

You make me hap-py,

When times are gray.

_'I never cried, daddy. Does that make me strong?_

_... I doubt it, momma calls me a freak.'_

You'll never know, dear,

How much I love you.

_'Momma knows how imperfect I am, she tells me all the time. _It was harder to write with her right hand, took more thought and the letters didn't come out the same. But she wanted to make momma happy._ I remember when I was little, she bought me those Mary Janes and I wore them as much as I could get away with. _

_... I'm not angry, momma. Just heartsick.' _

So she covers it up, the scars, the bandage across her ribs, with something orange, something she likes. Wears a red skirt, because it hurts when daddy calls her a boy. Bites back the cross words she wants to say because she knows its disrespectful to wish him dead. She buries them all deep and smiles behind the coke-bottle glasses on her face, though the smile feels wooden, plastered on a wax doll. A fake, a pretender.

So she'll be the strong one, takes the fire poker in her hands. Lifts it up and chokes out a cry, screams and her mind goes blank. (She's not used to that, she's a very cerebral person. Doesn't like it when action takes the place of thought _because there is no time,_) he'll kill her, kill Daphne, and with the adrenaline pounding in her veins, she manages to throw him off her long enough to bring the pronged end up out of instinct; he growls, throws himself at her and then everything is still for a moment and she knows one or both of them is dead or she's gone crazy.

Shaking, she stumbles over and gathers Daphne up in the dark, because Fred's not there to do it for her. She'll be the strong one, brushing Daphne's hair back, telling her its alright and leading her away from the room even though all she wants is just to close her eyes and sleep forever without dreams, or just to scream and never stop.

Purple and orange. She'd never say the colors went together, but they've made it work.

_'You'll never know, dear, _

_ how much I love you...'_

And when it all fades to black, she doesn't fight it this time.


End file.
